Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology
Date Submitted: Apr 24, 2022
Date Accepted: Aug 15, 2022
Seasonality of Hashimoto's thyroiditis: an infodemiology study of Google Trends data
ABSTRACT
Background:
Hashimoto's thyroiditis is an autoimmune thyroid disease and the leading cause of hypothyroidism in areas with sufficient iodine intake.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to investigate potential seasonality of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis using Google Trends data.
Methods:
Monthly Google Trends data on the search topic “Hashimoto’s thyroiditis” has been retrieved in a 17-year timeframe from January 2004 till December 2020 for 36 European countries. A cosinor model analysis was conducted to evaluate potential seasonality. Simple linear regression was used to estimate the potential effect of latitude and longitude on seasonal amplitude and phase of the model outputs.
Results:
Out of 36 included European countries, significant seasonality was observed in 83% (n=30/36) of countries. Most phase peaks occurred in spring (46.7%, n=14/30) and then winter (26.7%, n=8/30). A statistically significant effect has been observed regarding the effect of geographical latitude on cosinor model amplitude, y = -3.23 + 0.13x (R2=0.29, p=0.002).
Conclusions:
Significant seasonality of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis Google Trends search volume has been observed in our study, with seasonal peeks in most countries occurring in Spring and Winter, with a significant impact of latitude on seasonality amplitude. Further studies on the topic of seasonality in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and factors impacting it are required. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.